Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sex - Sex / The End Of My Life (1970-71 canada, good hard groovy rock with psych and prog drops)

A French-Canadian band from Montreal, Quebec, whose lyrics are English. Both their albums are now rare. The first leans very much towards hard rock with sledgehammer drums, thundering rhythm, furious guitar leads and wasted vocals. There's some nice woodwind on 'Come, Wake Up!', some pleasant mouth harp on 'Try' and some fuzzy guitar on 'Night Symphony' and 'Love Is A Game'; but overall the menu's heavy-handed bluesy hard rock. The first 45 was culled from this album. All the material was penned by Gratton, Rousseau and Trepanier. The lyrics are very much in the spin of their name, particularly the final cut. For hard rockers only!

1971's "The End of My Life" found Sex expanded to a quartet with the addition of sax/woodwind player Pierre "Pedro" Ouellette. Produced by Joey Gallmi, the album marked a distinctive change in the band's sound. Largely abandoning the debut's blues-rock direction, this time out tracks like 'Born to Love' and '' found them trying to find a niche somewhere between progressive and jazz-rock genres.

I'm probably reading way too much into it, but the set seemed to have been put together as a concept piece - the plotline seemingly having something to do with following a man's love life from birth ('I'm Starting My Life Today') through STD-related death ('Syphilissia' - remember this was recorded in a pre-AIDS age). Hard to accurately describe, but imagine a bunch of sex addicted French Canadian musicians who suddenly decided they wanted to join the Canterbury progressive movement ... The results were actually better than that description would have you believe.BadCat

8 comments:

One of my treasures....Both albums by Canadian heavy progressive rock band on one CD from 1970 & 71. albums are ultra-rare and the music is comparable to Elias Hulk,very much towards hard rock.Marios ... Thanks for reminding

Thanks Marios, I'm really enjoying this album.Also, one has to give the band and the record label credit, naming an album "Sex" and then featuring a photo of three shirtless guys (and nobody else) running through a field was a pretty bold marketing ploy for 1970... :)